Eami

Eami means ‘forest’ in Ayoreo. It also means ‘world’. The story happens in the Paraguayan Chaco, the territory with the highest deforestation rate in the world. 25,000 hectares of forest are being deforested a month in this territory which would mean an average of 841 hectares a day or 35 hectares per hour. The forest barely lives and this only due to a reserve that the Totobiegosode people achieved in a legal manner. They call Chaidi this place which means ancestral land or the place where we always lived and it is part of the "Ayoreo Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage". Before this, they had to live through the traumatic situation of leaving the territory behind and surviving a war. It is the story of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people, told from the point of view of Asoja, a bird-god with the ability to bring an omniscient- temporal gaze, who becomes the narrator of this story developed in a crossing between documentary and fiction.

Boundless Life

Inuit Languages in the 21st Century

Ulivia explores what is accessible via the Internet in relation to Inuktitut. A complex language with several dialects which varies from one generation to the next. Inuktitut is threatened by dominant languages. Are there solutions so that these technologies are allies and not enemies?

Nuxalk Radio

A day in the life of 91.1, Nuxalk Radio, a radio station built to help keep the Nuxalk language alive while broadcasting the laws of the lands and waters.

Singapore On Film

Rare archive footage reveals what Singapore was like dating back to 1900, showing coolies sharing lunch, rickshaw pullers, a grand Peranakan funeral, and more.

Empire of My Melodious Mind

Be. Belonging. Words on vintage flash cards shuffle past in a stream-of-consciousness that shows the mind working, assigning labels and names to things through love and language. In the space of a moment, perception embarks on an epic journey of tongues, through Cantonese and English sounds and Ektachrome memories that form the characters and identity of this American-born Asian filmmaker.

The Disunited States of Canada

Secessionnist movements in Canada outside Quebec.

We Will Speak

The Cherokee language is deeply tied to Cherokee identity; yet generations of assimilation efforts by the U.S. government and anti-Indigenous stigmas have forced the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes to declare a State of Emergency for the language in 2019. While there are 430,000 Cherokee citizens in the three federally recognized tribes, fewer than an estimated 2,000 fluent speakers remain—the majority of whom are elderly. The covid pandemic has unfortunately hastened the course. Language activists, artists, and the youth must now lead the charge of urgent radical revitalization efforts to help save the language from the brink of extinction.

The Maltese Cross Movement

The film reflects Dewdney's conviction that the projector, not the camera, is the filmmaker's true medium. The form and content of the film are shown to derive directly from the mechanical operation of the projector - specifically the maltese cross movement's animation of the disk and the cross illustrates graphically (pun intended) the projector's essential parts and movements. It also alludes to a dialectic of continuous-discontinuous movements that pervades the apparatus, from its central mechanical operation to the spectator's perception of the film's images... (His) soundtrack demonstrates that what we hear is also built out of continuous-discontinuous 'sub-sets.' Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.

In My Blood It Runs

The story of Dujuan, a 10-year-old Aboriginal boy living in Alice Springs, Australia, who is struggling to balance his traditional Arrernte/Garrwa upbringing with a state education.

Plató

Disappearing

In southern Carinthia, about ninety percent of all inhabitants spoke Slovenian before 1910. Today it is on average a single digit percentage. In this very personal essay documentary, Andrina Mračnikar formulates a political urgency: What happens when one's mother tongue is taken away in everyday life. What must politicians do to counteract the disappearance of a language whose protection is enshrined in the Austrian constitution.

Cry Rock

The wild beauty of the Bella Coola Valley blends with vivid watercolor animation illuminating the role of the Nuxalk oral tradition and the intersection of story, place and culture.

Writing the Land

In this short documentary, a Musqueam elder rediscovers his Native language and traditions in the city of Vancouver, in the vicinity of which the Musqueam people have lived for thousands of years. Writing the Land captures the ever-changing nature of a modern city - the glass and steel towers cut against the sky, grass, trees and a sudden flash of birds in flight and the enduring power of language to shape perception and create memory.

The Unfinished Journey

A short about American life and history produced for the millennium New Year's Eve celebration.

Se dice poeta